Steve's passing

This shook me worse than I had expected. I think Justin put the finger on why: everything I've ever done creatively has passed through one of the products he helped create.

Then again, it is amazing that he got to stick around for another seven years after the first bell toll'd. I tried to wrap that emotion up in a short text (http://tappinginto.org/earning-his-years-steves-finale) but I mean - isn't is incredible that when he got his first warning, the iPhone didn't exist? How the hell did time pass so quickly?

I also think the Onion had a pretty great point - Seems like nobody these days has any clue about what they’re doing, especially in tech, and Jobs and Apple really stood out from that crowd. Whether or not Apple continues to have direction without Jobs, it still feels as though the world just became a bit more chaotic.

And really, consciously or unconsciously, I personally always viewed my coding as a sort of “maybe someday Jobs will see this,” or “maybe someday I’ll be good enough to work at Apple.” Now that’s gone, and there’s kind of a void there, if that makes sense.

The ability to remove all the 'crap' was the genius. I think that is true. I recall once some humor that showed a product packaging from Microsoft. The box had tons of crap on it. Think about all the crap you get when you buy a PC. Crap crap. It's there because the product is driven by an accountant or lawyer or marketer. Steve knew what crap to remove without hampering the usability of the product. The other genius was that he loved the products. We got a sense that he 'used' the products. Think of some tech company CEO getting up and displaying some new hardware. It's obvious they are coached. They try to come off as 'wow, this is great' (like Balmer), but you can smell the fakeness. Third component of the genius was knowing how to sell us something we didn't know we needed. That is a pretty hard thing to do I think.

Without getting political, I was thinking on the way to work about the new 'Jobs Bill'. I'd like to see it renamed 'The Steve Jobs Bill.' Provide the incentive to a new generation of people to start projects in their garages to make more Apples. I think the US's future depends on visionary people. It is what our schools are more geared towards and the area we still can compete in.

Looking ahead, I was thinking why they don't have the senior designer do the presentations? He might be more charismatic than Cook. A little part of me thinks of visionaries like Akio Morita of Sony and what eventually befell them.

No seriously, it looks like this dude's beard is home to some sort of rabid, inbred hobgoblin* that at any point will jump out from behind the gnarled strands forever crusted with earwax and cheezit dust and try to claw my face off.

I believe that if Steve Jobs hadn't returned to Apple, iDevGames probably wouldn't have existed for the last ten years, and I wouldn't have all the great experiences, memories, knowledge and fun from here that I do.

Many of us did secretly look for recognition from a man we never met simply because it was possible. We are entrepreneurs, and to make one of the best entrepreneurs of all time notice your work is quite the accomplishment.

I am more inspired to create great things. And I am taking Steve's words to heart and doing what I love: I will be leaving my full time corporate job in the next month and focus all my time on my small business. Life is too short, I was passionless at my day job, so it's time to use the money I've saved up and truly do what I want. Not just what I want, but what I feel I *need* to do.

Who will be the country's next great taste maker? Will it be from the tech world?